What your students can investigate

• Watch smog form in real time: track how nitrogen dioxide, sunlight, and ozone cycle through the day, and connect the spikes to traffic and time of day. The photochemical reaction, live on screen.
• Measure the gas that ripens a banana: capture ethylene off fruit and prove that “one bad apple spoils the bunch” with their own data.
• Bottle a fermentation: seal yeast in a jar and watch ethanol and hydrogen climb as the microbes go to work.
• Hunt down a smell: trace decomposition, compost, and the nitrogen cycle through your schoolyard or a wetland.
• Audit their own classroom air: sniff out formaldehyde off new furniture, carbon monoxide near a garage, or ozone from a printer, and ask what’s healthy to breathe.
• Connect a sensor to a volcano: link sulfur dioxide readings to real volcanic vog and island air quality (a natural fit for any Earth science or Hawaii unit).
• Compare the air across a community: measure contaminants near a highway, a park, and home, then ask why some neighborhoods breathe dirtier air than others.